Hidden Ones, Growing Up
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: Elijah, Elina, and Khemu have been through a lot as children. They're not children anymore though, they're going away to college, and now they have to learn to balance classes and homework with isu and artifacts. And, with a human rebellion in the isu civilization causing ripples throughout time, their problems are bigger now than they have ever been before.
1. Chapter 1

**If you're just starting in this series, it's part three (after Bayek of Nowhere, Father of No One, and Bayek, Through All Time. There's also a little collection of oneshots called Khemu of the Twenty First Century). I did my best to make sure it makes sense, but obviously reading the whole thing is going to help the most.**

 **-/-**

Elijah's last night at home is spent wide awake and worrying.

Tomorrow he's leaving for school. He's leaving for the school where he's going to be away from his dad and his home for _months_. And yes he's excited but he's also—

He's scared. He hasn't been genuinely _scared_ in years, and why should he be? He has people he can count on, skills he can count on, and… well, come on. What kind of danger could compete with what he's seen already?

(College. Turns out college is just as terrifying as time travel, as knowing his dad's been turned into a statue, as temporarily losing his mind.)

He texts Khemu, and then Elina, but neither one answers so Elijah assumes they're both asleep. He tosses his phone onto his desk and turns over in bed. Then he turns back. He's not at all tired, and he's thinking a million miles a minute.

About one in the morning, his bedroom door creaks. Elijah sits straight up in bed, fumbling instinctively for a weapon. He's not exactly a fighter, but he's a Sage, a time traveler, and the son of an Assassin turned Hidden One. He _has_ had people try to kill him before, and he's had to learn to defend himself.

"It's me, Elijah."

"Oh." He relaxes. "Dad, I thought you were asleep."

"I couldn't sleep," he says. "And I thought I heard you tossing and turning in here."

Hidden by the darkness in the bedroom, Elijah smiles sheepishly. "I guess I'm nervous," he says. "I've never been away from home for that long."

"Well," his dad says. "That's completely untrue."

Elijah shifts over on the bed and sits up to give his dad room to sit down. He feels the mattress dip. "Okay," he admits. "I've never been away from home for that long for such a normal reason."

"See?" his dad says. "This won't be so bad compared to some of the things you've already done. And you can call anytime."

Something about the way his voice catches on the words makes Elijah think that what he's actually saying is _please don't forget to call_.

Elijah moves closer and hugs his dad. "You know I love you, right?" he says. "I'm going to miss you."

They sit in silence for a long minute. Elijah's eyes are wet, and he can feel his dad's arm tight around his shoulders.

When Elijah eventually decides to say something, it takes him two tries to get it out. It feels important though. It feels like the kind of thing he's supposed to say before leaving home for the first time to go away to school. "When I was a kid," he says. "And I left Mom, I didn't know what I was doing. I _knew_ I had to do something, but I didn't know why. I didn't think I was going to find you and get a real family."

"Elijah."

He pushes on. "I barely felt like a person before. You, and Khemu, and Elina, you changed all that."

Then he stops, because—in that moment, he _knows_ how much his dad loves him. He knows that, and he knows his dad knows how much Elijah loves him. There's nothing he can say now that will do anything but ruin the moment.

He falls asleep less than fifteen minutes later, and when he wakes with he sun the next morning, the rest of his life begins.

-/-

The first eighteen years of Elijah's life have been more eventful than most people's. He'd started life as a Sage, knowing and understanding things that he just shouldn't have been able to. He remembers being born—from the very first minute of his life, Elijah had been different.

For a muddy, lonely several years, he'd lived without really _living_. He'd _known_ plenty, but he hadn't been connected, to anything or anyone, not until the day when he'd woken up and known it was time to leave. He'd come to the Hidden Ones, where he meet first Khemu—his first friend—and then Elina, and his dad, and in a way himself.

They'd had to get rid of Juno before things could calm down enough to just let them live, but they'd done it. He'd helped. He'd gotten a life, and for several years he'd just… gone to school, hung out with his friends, lived with his dad in peace. Until Aita had come from the distant past and… well, there had been misunderstandings.

He'd run to the past with Khemu, Elina, Khemu's mother, and Layla—a family friend, by now. They'd traveled from century to century, recruiting help, gearing up for what they thought was going to be a fight with Aita. Things had gone wrong. Elijah had lost himself for a while and believed he _was_ Aita. Khemu had spent a year with pirates. And in the end, they hadn't even needed to fight. All those people they'd recruited, they'd just ended up talking to Aita, convincing him that humanity was worth putting up with, even respecting, from an isu point of view.

It had worked so well that Aita had gone out and adopted—well, unofficially adopted—a human daughter. Elijah sees Ana fairly often, when Aita brings her by to visit, and for a month or so every summer when she comes to visit, and spend some time with people that are actually the same species as she is. She's very observant, and notices things that most people don't—Elijah thinks she must have had to adapt to living with isu, who just _know_ things that humans don't. Instead of knowing, she notices.

It's a weird world that Elijah lives in, a weird life he lives, even if most of high school has been relatively calm. Still, there's still the occasional blip of interest. He's never going to be able to _completely_ move past whatever it is in his head that wants him to think he's Aita, but he's learned to live with it. A couple years ago, when stress at school was making it happen more and more, his dad had sat down with him and talked him through some of the techniques he'd used in the animus to fight the bleeding effect. That helps a lot. And the Hidden Ones—the combination of ex-Assassins and ex-Templars that most of Elijah's friends and family are a part of—are focusing more and more on issues in the past these days. Elijah doesn't keep track that closely of what they do from day to day, but one of the things they do is help Sages throughout history that have gone crazy. Elijah tries to make sure he's always there to help with that.

All that's going to have to stop now. Khemu's already been away at school for a year, so Elijah has heard _all_ about how hard it is to hide things that make you different. He's going to have to be just a normal freshman.

Moodily, Elijah kicks at the leg of the dining room table. He's never been a normal _anything_. It doesn't sound like much fun.

"What did the table do to you?" his dad asks, as the two of them pick at their breakfasts.

"Nothing," Elijah mumbles.

"Okay then, what else is bothering you?"

Elijah takes a deep breath. "Everyone's going to know I'm weird," he says.

"So what if you're—"

"And I _like_ being weird," Elijah says. "I don't like having to hide it." His dad is grinning at him before he even finishes the sentence. "What?"

"You're never going to be able to hide that you're weird," he says. "It's all over your face."

Literally, it _is_ all over his face. Elijah inherited his face from Aita, who doesn't even look that normal, with his mismatched eyes and untamable hair, compared to other isu. Elijah always draws stares, whatever he's doing and wherever he goes. Still. "Thanks, Dad."

His dad puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes. "You're going to do great," he says. "You're going to make friends, and learn things, and when you need us, we'll always be here."

It's that last part that really makes it okay. It takes Elijah's fear and turns it into regular old nerves. He can deal with that. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

His dad grins at him. "Great," he says. "Then let's get the car loaded up."

-/-

Elina had struggled with the decision of whether or not she should even apply to college. By now, she's fully committed to the Hidden Ones. That's her future, and she's happy with it. Running around between centuries, traveling through time, fixing whatever kinds of problems might pop up? Yea, please. She can't imagine anything better.

In the end, three things make her decide to go. First of all, it's something her dad wants, and that matters. He wants her to have a full education, and in the long run four years isn't such a long time that it's worth arguing about. Second, there are things she can learn in school that will help her in the past. She decides on a history major, and looks forward to four years of being the only person in that program that knows for sure her degree is going to come in handy. And third, her friends are going. Khemu's already been at school for a year, Elijah has already made it clear he wants to follow him, and Elina isn't ready to not be with them.

When it comes right down to it, that's what matters the most.

Her dorm room is tiny, and her roommate is quiet and bug eyed, like she's perpetually surprised by the world around her. Elina's… not fully sure what to make of that, so after a little bit of small talk she skulks her way into the boys' dorm and finds her way to the room Khemu and Elijah are going to be sharing for the year.

She can't pretend she's not jealous. They get to live together while she's stuck on her own with a stranger.

"You guys have a _lot_ of stuff," she announces, looking around their room. She can hear that her voice is louder than usual, trying to cover up how she's feeling. "I mean, more stuff than I brought, and definitely more stuff than my roommate brought, I don't think she—"

Khemu surprises her with a hug. Elina looks at him with surprise. "It's going to be okay," he says, voice serious. In the last few years he's gotten taller, and filled out, and at times like this he reminds Elina a lot of his dad. Bayek has this kind of rock solid, reassuring presence that Khemu is starting to grow into.

"I don't know," Elina says. "It feels all wrong."

"I know," Khemu says. "That's just how it feels when you start."

Elina is still skeptical, but Khemu's hug and his words are having an effect at least.

"I feel the same way," Elijah admits from where he's surrounded by a cluster of boxes. "But Khemu says it goes away."

"It'll go away fast," Khemu promises them both. "Faster than it did for me, because we're all together."

"I'm a floor up and two hallways away," Elina complains. "That's not all together."

"It's a three minute walk," Khemu says.

"Well it's longer when you get lost on the way," Elina admits. She's not great at directions, and everywhere in the dorms looks exactly the same to her. Her argument is half hearted though. It's hard to stay too upset after a hug from Khemu.

She sits down on one of the beds—Elijah's, it looks like, judging by the boxes he's barely started to unpack—and rummages around in his things while the boys start to bicker over how much space they each need. Elina's content to just sit and half listen, but after only a few minutes she hears Elijah go quiet and scramble to his feet.

"What's wrong?" she asks, looking up and tensing for a fight.

"I don't know," Elijah says. "Someone's coming though."

And then a moment later she feels it too, a sort of electric buildup in the room around her that she's eventually come to realize is a sign that someone's time travelling toward them. As usual, Elijah's sixth sense picks up on the change first.

And then Aita is stumbling into the room from nowhere, off balance in a way that Elina doesn't usually associate with him, clutching Ana tight against his chest. They're both disheveled, Ana is crying, and Aita looks _afraid_.

Elina looks sideways at Khemu, who looks as clueless as she feels. He shrugs and they share a _weird Elijah stuff is happening_ look. It's a familiar look after all this time, but Elina hadn't been expecting to have to drag it out the first morning they all get to college together.

"You know what this is?" Khemu whispers, sidling over to her. On the other side of the room, Elijah and Aita are having what looks like a very serious conversation in the isu language, peppered with the occasional comment from Ana.

"What?" she whispers back.

"An adventure," Khemu says grimly. "Something big is happening."

Elina hesitates, then nods. "Something happened to Aita, you think?" she asks.

"Him or Ana," Khemu says.

"I hope not Ana," Elina says. She watches as Aita lowers his adopted daughter to the floor and hugs her tight. The movement seems somehow unbalanced. "Poor baby."

"She's not really a baby," Khemu says. "She's eight now."

"She's a baby," Elina says again, watching the way Aita dwarfs her. Then her eyebrows shoot up (she can actually feel the muscles on her forehead twisting as her eyebrows go rocketing upward) when Aita steps forward and vanishes.

"There's been an uprising," Elijah says somberly, in English. "In Aita's time—well, something's happened. He didn't tell me all the details, but some humans have gotten their hands on an apple of Eden. There are riots, and a lot of isu on human violence."

"Oh no," Elina says, following this thought process to the logical conclusion. "They would have hurt Ana?"

The girl makes a noise halfway between misery and terror.

"We have to watch her," Elijah says. "I promised Aita we would, just until things calm down there."

"It's time travel," Elina says. "Shouldn't he be able to come right back?"

"He'll come back when the time is right," Elijah says. It's the kind of infuriatingly vague answer that apparently comes with having a sixth sense. She's heard this kind of stuff from Elijah a thousand times over the years, and from Aita several times as well. She knows better than to argue with it by now. "Things need to calm down, and sort of… settle into one timeline. There's too many variables there right now, and too many branching alternate histories."

"Sure," Elina says, as if this makes total sense. It does to Elijah and it does to Aita and that's all they need to know for right now. Well, that and the fact that between the three of them, they're going to have to find a way to take care of an eight year old.

As if this thought has occurred to all three of them at the same time, they look down at Ana. She stands between them, shaking all over and holding her arms tight across her body. "Come here," Elina says softly, and Ana runs to her immediately for comfort. It takes a while to calm her down, and in the end she only stops shaking when the three of them wrap her up in one of Khemu's blankets and tuck her into a corner of the bed.

"Elina," Elijah says quietly, reaching out to grab her elbow. "You need to talk to her."

"Me?"

"Yea."

"Why?"

He'd been so nervous only a few minutes ago, torn up with anxieties about school and leaving home. Now, as tragic as the circumstances are, he's in his element. So is she, if she's being honest—so is Khemu. They're used to this kind of excitement, this is they stuff they can deal with.

"Because I _know_ she's not going to talk to either of us," Elijah says. "And I'd reallylike to know what's going on in the past."

"Aita didn't tell you?"

"Not much," Elijah says. "I've never seen him that…" He looks for the word. "Frazzled?"

"Oh," Elina says, without enthusiasm. "Great. Because that's a good sign." Aita's never frazzled.

"I know," Elijah says. "Talk to her?" He gestures back to Khemu. "We're going to have to figure out how to hide her in here until Aita comes back, and there's something I want to look at."

Elina nods. "Yea," she says. "I'll do the best I can."

So while the boys huddle up in the opposite corner of the room, Elina climbs up onto the bed next to Ana. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asks.

Ana's eyes are wide. "Is she going to come here?" she asks. She has a pretty accent, sort of lilting in a way that makes her sound like she's always about to start singing. Elina has never heard it from anyone else, not even the isu she's met—they don't have to _learn_ English, the way Ana has, they just know it.

"Who?" Elina asks.

Ana shrugs with one shoulder. "People came to the house," she says. "They had a fight with Daddy, 'n he got hurt…"

"Hurt?" Elina echoes. "How—"

Ana tilts her whole body forward and mimes stabbing something at Elina. For a second Elina stares at her, then her eyes flick over to where Elijah and Khemu are standing. Elijah is squatting next to Khemu, looking at something wet and red on the floor where Aita had been standing.

This, Elina finally and fully realizes, is bad.

 **-/-**

 **So here is chapter one, hopefully it is liked, and I am sorry it took so long to get it up! All I want to do is write about Odyssey right now. :'(**


	2. Chapter 2

Aita's world is crashing down around him, and he doesn't know what to do to stop it. He doesn't even know if he _should_ try and stop it. Maybe this is what his world needs, but even if it is, he still needs to protect the people that he cares about.

As he returns to his own time, he's already bracing for the chaos that hits him the second his feet are back on solid ground. He immediately stows the apple out of sight (right now, the way things are, it's dangerous to have it visible), and looks around to get his bearings.

He has never seen this kind of chaos before—it's not something that _happens_ in isu cities. There has never been rioting in the streets, there has never been mobs of humans learning to think and feel and _be angry_ all at the same time. There has never been fire, and violence, and anger.

And Aita doesn't understand why any of it is happening. He doesn't know why the humans (not all of them but a _lot_ of them) have suddenly broken free from the control of the apples of Eden. Aita is in favor, generally, of humans having free will. He knows enough humans by now to know they deserve as much freedom as the isu do. He has enough human friends to believe in their potential as a species.

But this isn't the way to do it.

The screaming city is dividing itself into pieces. Humans that have never been able to think for themselves are suddenly free from the apples, dealing with things they don't understand, and it's logical enough that they're lashing out. Aita can't imagine how he'd react, in a situation like that. But it doesn't change the fact that it's really not helping them make a good first impression.

Aita doesn't think this is the time or the place to make a statement about supporting humans. There's too much chaos right now, they need to get things under control, take stock, figure out _what is going on_ and then figure out what they've lost. For now, the most important thing is to find somewhere safe to ride it out. And at least Ana is many thousands of years away from danger.

For now, he just had to focus on keeping himself safe. Sure. Easy. Except that there's already a gaping wound in his side from an earlier skirmish, and he can barely breathe without feeling like he's tearing himself open, and there's blood all over his clothes already, dripping down into a puddle at his feet.

All around him, people are screaming. Aita can't let himself give into that. First, he needs to find somewhere safe. Second, he needs… _ow_. He needs medical attention.

In general, the isu are heading into the center of the city while the humans are congregating on the outer edges. Aita heads toward the center too, and before long he's intercepted by a pair of medics that see his blood and come running over with bandages and painkillers.

"Another human injury," one of them says, clucking like a mother hen. "I can't believe how quickly they turned on us." Her face is worryingly pale. "I can't believe how violent they are…"

"This wasn't a human," Aita says.

This time, the woman's companion speaks. "You _have_ been stabbed," he points out. "If it wasn't a human, who was it?"

"An isu," Aita says, because of course if it's not a human it's going to be one of them.

"But… that doesn't make any sense. Why would…?"

They're looking at him like he's done something wrong, and Aita… he can't explain that he'd been shielding his human daughter, and that the blade that went into his side had been meant for her. "It was an accident," he lies. Then he follows it up with a truth, because the isu are much better than humans at knowing when something is a lie, and the more truth he puts in his story, the less likely they are to pick up on the parts that are a lie. "They were… aiming for someone else."

"A human," the woman says knowingly. "They must have been aiming for a human."

Yes, Aita thinks. They had. And they'd almost killed her, too.

-/-

Khemu has to convince Elina to go back to her own room when it starts getting later in the evening. She wants to stay with the two of them and Ana, which Khemu doesn't _blame_ her for, but it's their first day in the dorms.

 _Their first day_. It had only taken them one day to get mixed up in a human-isu revolution. Who even does that?

"Khemu," Elina says, when he's finally managed to steer her out into the hallway. "What if something else comes up? What if we need to—"

"You," he says, steering her down the hallway with his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Need to go back to your room, and make friends with your roommate, and talk about what classes you're looking forward to, and complain about the food in the cafeteria."

"What—Khemu, that's not what I'm going to do. This stuff's more important!"

"I know," he says. "But that's the kind of stuff people do on their first day of college. Don't be weird right now, okay? Right now, everyone's paying attention to everyone else. They're trying to figure out who they're going to be living with for the next nine months, and who they can make friends with. Don't be weird."

Elina gives him a long suffering look. "I'm _not_ weird."

"Just act normal. For Ana, okay? We can't make anyone think that anything's going on."

"I hope you have a plan to make _Elijah_ seem less weird, then," Elina mutters.

"Listen," Khemu says. "I'm not a miracle worker."

"I heard that!" Elijah calls over to them.

"Then stop listening!" Khemu calls back. He lowers his voice. "Elina, I know you want to help, but seriously. Trust me?"

She hesitates, then nods. "Text me if anything happens."

"I'll text you before it happens," Khemu promises. "Or Elijah will, anyway."

And that's finally enough for her to go. Khemu's a little uncertain, but… the truth is, it _is_ their first night at school, and he's sure someone on her floor will be looking for people to go out with, or to talk to, or to make friends with. Khemu had survived his first year here alone by staying quiet and fitting in as much as possible, so that people didn't notice as much when something weird _did_ happen.

He goes into his and Elijah's room and shuts the door.

Ana has fallen asleep on Elijah's bed, so his roommate is sitting on his desk chair, spinning slowly around.

"You're going to make yourself sick," Khemu says softly, so he won't wake Ana.

Elijah shakes his head. "It's going to take exactly seventeen rotations to make me sick," he says.

Khemu watches him spin slowly. "You know a lot of stupid stuff with your sixth sense," he says. "Don't you?"

"Yea," Elijah says glumly. "But I don't know what happened to Aita or Ana, or how to help them."

"Why don't you just go find out?" Khemu asks. "You can time travel. You can get there."

"And then what?" Elijah asks. "I'd only be mistaken for a human slave, or _worse_ , part of whatever rebellion is going on right now. And they know more than I do, they're bigger than us, I'd either be locked up or killed."

"So we sit and wait?" Khemu asks, hating the option.

"And try to be normal," Elijah says. "Like you told Elina." He makes a face and spins around again on the chair. "I hate being normal. I _hate being normal_ , Khemu. I'm really bad at it. So are you, and so's Elina, when it comes right down to it."

"But—"

"I'm really worried about him, too," Elijah says, talking over him. The chair slowly spins to a stop, and Elijah pulls his legs up so his feet are on the chair, and he can rest his chin on his knees. "Isn't that stupid? He almost killed us all that one time but now I don't want him to die."

"I don't think that's weird," Khemu says. "Even when he _was_ trying to kill us, you went and saved him."

"Mmm." Elijah looks thoroughly miserable.

Khemu looks at the bags under his eyes. Tired, homesick, and now this. "Okay Elijah," he says. "This is what you need to do. Go binge something you like on Netflix, then get some sleep. Use my bed, if Ana's still on yours. I'm not talking to you again until you've cried and gotten some sleep."

A little bit of life flashes into Elijah's eyes. "I'm not going to _cry_ ," he protests.

Khemu puts his computer in Elijah's hands, and steers him to his bed. "Dumb TV," he says. "Then bed."

-/-

Khemu stays up that night, because Ana is on Elijah's bed, and Elijah is on his. A little before midnight, long after Elijah has given up on his prescribed dumb TV and turned off the light, he starts to cry softly and doesn't stop for half an hour or so, until the noise fades out and Elijah, presumably falls asleep.

-/-

Elijah makes sure everything is normal before Ana wakes up the next morning. He's still feeling… off balance from the move here, but Ana is little, and farther from home than he is. When he wakes up, right about the crack of dawn, Elijah steps over the piles of boxes they hadn't touched yesterday, and the two of them start to unpack as quietly as possible. When Ana finally starts to stir, they're mostly unpacked. Elijah looks up, watches her sleepy gaze fix on his face, then sees her expression crumble in disappointment when she realizes who he is (and, more importantly, who he's not).

He sits down and waits for her to climb over the edge of the bed and drop to the floor—the beds here are built to allow as much storage as possible underneath, which means the space between the mattress and the ground is almost taller than Ana. When her feet are both safely on solid ground, she comes over to Elijah. "Is Dad coming back?" she asks him.

"He's…" Elijah has no idea. It always seems to be like this—whenever the most important things come up, the stuff it would really _help_ to just know, he doesn't get any sixth sense help on figuring it out. "He's going to come back as soon as he possibly can. And until he does, you're going to stay with me and Khemu."

Ana's face doesn't change.

"And Elina," Elijah says. "She's here too, so… there's going to be three of us taking care of you. It'll be great."

He has to force that last sentence out. It sounds hollow, and he knows Ana won't be convinced. Well, neither is he. It's… not great. It's just not.

Sure enough, the next thing she asks is, " _When_ is he coming back?"

Luckily, before Elijah has to think of either an explanation or a lie, Khemu comes to an answer. "Soon," he says. "You know he'd never leave you for a second longer than he has to, right?"

She agrees to this. She believes it so completely that she agrees right away—Elijah can see it in her eyes, the way she looks up at him, gaze wide open and trusting.

"But right now…" Elijah hesitates before telling him what he sort of feels like, deep down, he wishes someone would tell him. "You need to be patient, and you need to be brave, and he's going to come back."

Ana doesn't answer for a long time. She fidgets, and then finally she says—not in English, but in the isu language that no one else has spoken for thousands and thousands of years—"He loves me."

The words are almost daring him to disagree, and Elijah frowns. "Of course he does," he tells her, following the cue and slipping into her native language.

"People don't think he does," Ana says. "People say—they don't think… because we're different. And I'm human and stupid and he's great, they think… he doesn't love me. They don't say it but I—I _see_ it, they don't think…"

She mumbles something and puts her hands on her face. Elijah reaches forward very gently, and pulls them away. "Ana," he says. "You're not stupid."

"Yes I _am_ , I don't know what everybody else knows and I can't… I'm… _Elijah_ …"

Elijah has never stopped to think about what it must be like for Ana to grow up as the human daughter of an isu man, adopted or otherwise. Sure, it's pretty obvious that in the middle of a human-isu revolution she's going to be in danger, but in her normal, every day life? She shouldn't have to put up with people making her feel like this.

"Ana," he says. "Do you understand what people are fighting over?"

She gave him a look like _what does that have to do with anything_ , then shook her head. "No."

"You know… when you're at home, and you see other humans, you know how they're not really like you?"

"They don't act like people," Ana says. "They don't think."

"Yes," Elijah says, nodding his head so quickly he gets dizzy. He's relieved that he doesn't have to explain that much, at least. "They don't think, because they're not allowed to think. People have stopped them from being able to think the way they should. And when they see you, and you're not like them, they wonder why not. And that scares them. Humans don't think the same way as isu—people _like_ when other people think the same way they do."

The clueless look she gives him almost breaks his heart. "I don't get it," she says.

Elijah gives her a one armed hug. "Good," he says quietly, in English. "You shouldn't have to."

"But—"

"Just trust me," Elijah says. "There's nothing wrong with you, and you're not stupid, and everything is going to turn out okay."

Ana relaxes a little at that, which makes Elijah breathe out a sigh of relief. He's not fully convinced himself that everything is going to be okay, but at this point, he's happy just to be able to get through a conversation without making Ana any more upset than she already is.

Baby steps.

-/-

Elina has a hard time getting away from the other girls on her floor. Her RA seems to have made it her personal mission in life to make them all friends. She'd gone around to all of them, _early_ , knocking on doors and force-inviting them down to breakfast with her.

For the first time, Elina feels like she and her roommate are actually on the same page about something. They're still not talking, mostly out of sheer, concentrated awkwardness. But when their RA had come knocking on their door, Elina had looked across the tiny room, met the gaze of her roommate, and they'd shared a silent moment of _you have got to be kidding me._

But there hadn't been a joke, and everyone else in the floor is so enthusiastic that neither of them had been able to escape being shanghaied. It's still early enough that almost no one else is downstairs, and it's easy for them to claim one of the longest tables in the cafeteria.

Elina focuses on figuring out what cafeteria foods are the most edible (she learns the eggs are bad but the muffins are fine) while everyone else chatters about finding their classes and where the bars are and where they came from. There are a couple other girls that are shy and staying quiet, but Elina is obviously the least interested in conversation.

She's scanning the room, doing what Layla has been trying to teach her, and looking for all the exits (in case she needs to get away quickly) and all the possible weapons (in case a fight breaks out without warning). Her dad, who very much approves of Layla learning to think like someone's always going to track her, would be proud of how many she sees as she looks around the cafeteria.

Her searching eyes passes over the door out to campus, and then stops.

There's an isu walking in.

"Crap," she whispers, so quietly that she doesn't even hear it herself. _Crap._

Not again.

 **-/-**

 ** _*_ Cries* I'm so sorry for how rambling this is. I'm still trying to figure out where I'm going with this, it's a new fic (even if it is part 3 of a series). I'm sorry! I'm trying!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Very, very minor spoilers for Odyssey in this chapter (if you've done the Atlantis missions where you bring the artifacts back, you hear them giving little monologues). This fic takes place pre-Odyssey for that character though, so the only real spoil is that they exist.**

 **-/-**

Elina stands up so fast that her chair clattered over, eyes wide as she stares. There's an isu here. An actual isu, and it's not Aita, which would at least have been normal. For her, anyway. She's used to him, at least. Other people might still think it's weird.

"Elina?" her roommate asks. "Hey, you okay?"

"I—" She looks again at the isu, who is now sitting at a table directly across the room from her, looking directly at her, watching. To Elina, who is used to seeing Aita, it couldn't be more obvious that his woman is an isu. It's stamped clearly across her features, and she has the same look in her eyes that Tyler and Aita get when they just _knew_ something that's going to end up being really annoying. But… she's also clearly younger than Aita. Smaller, or at least small enough that she looks more like a taller than average human, instead of a member of a long dead species. And she's dressed in _normal clothes_. That alone makes her blend in way better than Elina has ever seen Aita blend.

No one else even gives her a second glance, and for a second Elina feels straight up crazy. "Yea," she says, not taking her gaze off the isu. "I'm fine, everything's fine, why would everything be fine?" She pauses, then corrects herself. "Why _wouldn't_ everything be fine?"

"I mean, you're the one freaking out," one of the other girls says. "So… obviously something's not fine?" She looks up from her phone and raises her eyebrows. "Chill, maybe?"

"Have a pancake," a third offers. "They're great."

Elina does not want to chill, she does not want to eat pancakes, and she does not want to sit here and act like there's nothing wrong when there's some random _isu_ lady sitting on the far side of the room.

"Hey," Elina's roommate says. "Hey, Elina." Her eyes are saying _please don't be weird please don't be weird please let's not be the weird room already._

"What?" Elina asks.

"Your phone keeps buzzing."

"What? Oh." It doesn't exactly seem important right at the moment, but Elina glances down anyway. If something happened with Elijah and Khemu, one of them might be texting her. Instead, she sees a message from an unknown number on her screen.

 _If you sit down and do what your new friends are asking you to do, no one will think anything strange is going on._

Elina isn't sure whether to be more confused by the message itself, or by why anyone would think these people that are looking at her like she's a crazy person could be called her friends. As she's still trying to puzzle it out, her phone buzzes a second time, and a new message pops up.

 _Eat your pancakes, please, and stop staring at me._

Elina's butt hits her seat so quickly it makes a little thumping noise. The isu. The isu somehow knows (she _knows_ , of course she does) Elina's phone number and she's texting her.

As Elina reaches for her phone and fully focuses her attention on the texts, the conversation at the table starts to move on without her. Now she's just a normal person with more interest in her phone than in the conversation going on around her. It's the kind of first impression she can live with, and everyone else can accept. Fine. That's fine, that's okay.

 _What's your name?_

She hits send, then taps her fingers on the table, staring at the unknown isu as much as she can without being incredibly obvious about it. There are so many other questions she wants to ask—what are you doing here, why are you pretending to be a student, why hasn't anyone noticed you're not even human?

Her phone eventually buzzes again, and she almost dives for it.

 _My name is Aletheia_.

 _And why are you here?_

 _I followed another of my people to this time. I think you know him._

 _Aita?_

 _Yes._

Elina bites her lip, wondering if Aita even knows that someone's been following him from his time to this one. She looks up again at the woman, Aletheia, who is looking back at her with just as much curiosity. Embarrassed at being caught staring, Elina looks back down at her phone.

 _Can we meet up somewhere and talk?_

A long pause follows. It's so long, in fact, that Elina isn't fully sure that Aletheia is actually going to answer. Finally, just as the rest of the group is starting to break up and head out to different parts of campus—some to find their classrooms for the looming first day of school, some to go back to their rooms, some to go… Elina isn't really listening that closely—her phone buzzes again.

 _Yes._

 _Where?_

 _Follow me_.

So Elina slips away, using the cover of the group to make sure no one notices when or where she goes. She's part of the crowd, but always on the edges, never near the center, and no one is looking when she walks right up to Aletheia and stops. "Hi," she says.

"Hello," the woman says, although… now that she's closer, Elina is mentally reassessing _woman_. She'd assumed Aletheia was an adult because she's never really thought about younger isu. Kids, sure. Every year when Ana comes to visit, she's absolutely full of stories about the kids her age, and which ones will talk to her and which ones won't, but she's always sort of subconsciously assumed that the isu could just jump over being teenagers, or something.

Aletheia looks like a teenager.

"How old are you?" Elina asks.

"Seventeen," Alteheia says, her voice as perfectly accentless as Aita's is when he speaks English.

Aletheia is _younger_ than her.

"What are you doing here?" Elina asks. "I know you said you followed Aita, but why? Why are you dressed like a human, and why did you start talking to me?"

"That's a lot of questions," Aletheia says. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Why are you here?" Elina asks.

For a long moment, they watch each other from across the table, and the Aletheia sits back down. "It's a long story," she says. "And I have to start by asking how much you know about isu society."

Elina sits down too, putting them on the same level. Close to the same level. Aletheia has at least three inches on Elina. "Not much," she says. "Most of what I know is just stuff I've heard in passing from Aita." Or from Ana, although Elina doesn't mention her. The isu aren't all knowing, and if there's a possibility Aletheia doesn't already know about her, Elina wants to protect her.

"Then you have to understand," Aletheia says. "Everything in our world starts and ends with blood."

"Uh—"

"Not violence," Aletheia says quickly. "Ancestry. Genetics. We're a monarchy, and under the King, a council of advisors all inherited positions. Aita's part of it."

That makes Elina's eyebrows shoot way up. "He's someone important?" she asks.

" _Yea_ ," Aletheia says. "Do you think just anyone would be allowed to take an apple and use it for time travel? Or steal a little human girl and adopt her?"

So she does know about Ana. "I guess not," she says. "I don't know what's normal in your time."

"Not that," Aletheia says. "Definitely not that."

"Okay," Elina says. "So he's… important, apparently. What does that have to do with you?"

"My mother served on the council with him," Aletheia says. "And when she died, her place passed to me."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Elina mumbles.

"Are you?" Aletheia asks. "That's very kind of you. Most people at home aren't." Her face twists into the most human expression that Elina has seen on her face so far. That would probably count as an insult, if she said it out loud, so she doesn't. "Mother was curious about humans."

"Curious?"

And for some reason… for _some_ reason, that makes Aletheia fumble. "I mean… she was—she was interested. Always—she wanted to know more about them. And when I took her place on the council, I thought that the best way I could honor her memory was to learn what I could about humans. I went to Aita to learn—everyone knows he's been pro-human rights for years now, everyone knows he has that little girl. But nobody knows that he still comes here, and meets all of you. And when I found out—I had to follow him. I just had to." Her eyes are big, and there's a spark in them.

It's the spark that makes Elina pause. She recognizes it, from every time she and Elijah and Khemu have gone on an adventure. Aletheia's having one now.

"How long have you been here?" Elina asks.

"Long enough to find a box of clothes that didn't make it to where they were supposed to be," Aletheia says. "And then I came and found you."

"You were looking for me?" Elina asks. "Specifically?"

"No," Aletheia admits. "I was looking for whoever it is that Aita's always coming to visit. I _knew_ you were the one, the minute I saw you."

"Well I hate to break it to you," Elina says. "But you're not going to get the answers you want from me. You're going to get them from Elijah."

"Who's Elijah?"

Elina sighs and stands up, gesturing for Aletheia to follow her. "Listen," she says. "I don't understand how you isu just know what you know—"

"Subconscious information given off by electro fields and processed by the brain," Aletheia says.

Elina blinks. She hadn't been expecting a response.

"Humans can't do it because that part of your minds never developed."

"Okay," Elina says. "Let me correct that. I don't _understand_ how you isu just know what you know, but Elijah does, I bet, and he'll be better to explain everything to you."

"Great," Aletheia says. "So let's go see him."

"Sure," Elina says. "Let's go." She snaps off a text to Elijah and Khemu to warn them she's coming upstairs (although she can't explain Aletheia, she'd be here all day if she tried), and leads the isu off.

There's an odd sense of… unreality. The college seems, somehow, so quintessentially human. It's full of ordinary people going about their ordinary business in their ordinary lives, with no idea that they're passing so close to something so strange. Aletheia seems fascinated by everything she sees, touching walls as they walk past, the buttons on the elevator, the handles on the doors.

"People are going to think you're weird," Elina warns her when they're on the floor where Elijah and Khemu's room is.

"No one's looking," Aletheia says. "This is it, right?"

She's stopped at a door Elina had walked right past—she realizes with a start that it _is_ the right room. She's just not used to it yet. It's not like back home, where she knew their homes as well as her own. "Yea," she says, and knocks to cover her own embarrassment.

Khemu answers the door, and his eyes go at once to Aletheia. "Oh," he says. _"Oh_."

"Yea," Elina says. "Oh is pretty much right. Move, Khemu, we need to get in."

He moves, and when all of them are in the room, shuts the door behind them. Elijah is kneeling in front of Ana, talking quietly to her. Elina notices the way he looks when he spots Aletheia, and then the way he stands in front of Ana, shielding her. For a second, it makes her heart stop, because if Aletheia was a danger, Elijah would _know_ while she would only be guessing. She's actually relieved when his first words are only confused.

"Who are you?" he asks.

"Aletheia," Ana pipes up. She ducks past Elijah and goes to Altheia, who gives her something that's close to but not quite a high five. Another little reminder of how different the isu are, in so many subtle ways. She turns around to look at Elijah, and explains. "She works with Dad. She likes me."

"Well I guess that's okay then," Elina mutters.

"What's going _on_?" Khemu hisses at her, as the other three start into what looks like an intense conversation in the isu language. Elina catches him up as quickly as she can, and by the end Khemu is just staring at her.

"That's it," Elina says, when he's been quiet for a while. "That's all I know, for now."

"But what's she doing here _now_?" Khemu asks. "I mean, they're in the middle of a bloody revolt in her time, right? Assuming… I mean, she must be from right around that time, if Ana knows her."

"Seems like a pretty good time to get out of dodge to me," Elina points out. "I'd run from bloody revolution, if I could."

"No you wouldn't," Khemu says. "You're a Hidden One. You'd run toward it."

"Well alright," Elina allows. "But I'd feel stupid while I did it."

"I was scared."

They both look up at once to see Aletheia looking at her, frowning.

"You were—"

"Scared," Aletheia says. "Yes."

Next to her, Ana reaches up and tugs on her sleeve. "That's okay," she says. "Me too."

Elina looks at her two friends, and she doesn't have to be an isu to know what they're thinking. There's no way they can kick Aletheia out now.

"I figured this was as good a time as any to get away," Aletheia says. "I don't want to see… whatever's going to happen."

"It's that bad?" Khemu asks.

"It's _bad_ ," Aletheia says, and something twists in Elina's stomach. It's not her home, it's not where her family lives, but… that time and this one are so connected, so unavoidably connected, that she can't help but feel like they're in danger in some way they can't actually see yet.

"And," Aletheia says. "It's probably going to get worse, before it gets better."

-/-

Aita is patched up and taken farther into the city center, where it's supposed to be safer. Not that anyone really _knows_ , of course. A situation this busy and chaotic, with so many unknown factors and factions at play, makes the isu sixth sense almost useless. It's like the way staring into the sun for too long can blind you—the sheer amount of variables and possibilities in this situation makes their sixth sense.

There are two or three high rise buildings that are being used as sort of makeshift safehouses, with guards patrolling the streets around them. The buildings are probably big enough for the short term, Aita thinks, but they're not going to have much space. They'll be stepping all over each other soon.

"Aita! Aita."

He turns to see a harried looking man hurrying toward him. "Yes?" he says.

"The council is meeting upstairs," the man says, panting slightly. "You and Aletheia are the only two that aren't there yet."

"Thank you," Aita says, brushing past him and running up the stairs. There's no question what the council is going to be discussing considering the human rebellion taking place outside, and there aren't that many pro-human members of the council. He needs to be there, to try and talk them down from doing something drastic.

He finds his way to the room where the rest of the council is waiting, and sure enough everyone else is there, apart from Aletheia. He's not entirely surprised to find that she's not there, although he is disappointed. She's young, and probably upset. Safe, hopefully, wherever she is. But she's also one of the only people that will back him up when he argues that they _shouldn't_ march out into the streets and put down every human they see.

He takes a second to compose himself before stepping into the room, but it turns out it's not enough. As soon as he opens the door, a deluge of sound washes over him, half a dozen people arguing at the top of their collective lungs.

Juno's, of course, is the loudest of them all.

 **-/-**

 **I'm so weirdly excited to finally have Aita and Juno in the same scene. xD**


	4. Chapter 4

Aita can feel all eyes on him as he takes his accustomed seat on one end of the table. There had been conversation when he came in, but it's stopped now. Aita knows why, and it has nothing to do with his sixth sense—no, this is all just _common_ sense.

"Alright," he says, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He's directly across from Juno, who is staring intensely at him. "I know what you're all expecting me to say, so I'll come out and say it. Humanity is breaking free from our control, and this is the first chance we've ever really had to reach out tot hem.

"Reach out?" This is Juno, her voice low and smooth. It's a beautiful voice, or at least—it's the kind of voice that Aita has always found attractive. There was a time when he would have done anything for the kind of attention Juno is giving to him now, but Aita knows better. He knows the kind of person she would have become, or possibly _will_ become, trapped in that temple in the far future. He can't see anything beautiful anymore when he looks at her—all he sees is the destruction she'll one day cause.

"Yes," Aita says, and the only sound in the room is the two of them. Everyone else is listening as intently as they can, to see how this is going to turn out. No one else in this room is as in favor of human equality as Aita is, and no one is as against it as Juno. "They're people, they're sentient, they're intelligent. They're missing the sixth sense we have, but that's no reason to keep them mindless and enslaved."

"They're lesser," Juno says dismissively. "And always will be."

"There are isu that are blind," Aita says. "Or deaf. Or—"

"You're being deliberately idiotic!" Juno stands and slams the palms of both hands down onto the table. "You can't seriously be considering elevating them to the same level as us?"

"You're—"

"You brought one of them into your _home_ ," Juno says, and now there's a murmuring all around them. "Of course you're biased."

"Because I have first hand knowledge of what humans are capable of?" Aita asks. "That's not bias, that's just having information."

"It could be a kind of disease," Juno says. "You let one of them think for herself and now they all can—"

"That's superstitious nonsense," Aita snaps. "And you should know better than that." Other people are nodding, and Juno must see it to because she seems to realize she's gone too far, and backs down.

"The point is that they're dangerous," Juno says. "Look at what they're doing to our city."

" _They're waking up_ ," Aita says. "They're just learning to think for themselves."

"And the first thing they do is cause a riot!" Juno says. "This is the kind of behavior that we grew out of as a species, we don't do this kind of thing anymore."

"No," Aita says. "We limit ourselves to slavery."

"You've gone too far," a new voice says—an older man, one of the elders of the council. "Slavery is barbaric, and we are not barbarians."

"Then what would you call what we do to the humans?" Aita asks.

"We use them," he says. "As tools are meant to be tools."

It's like talking to a brick wall, and Aita is lost for words, for so long that the conversation moves right on without him while he's still trying to think of a comeback.

The rest of the next hour or so doesn't go much better than that. The conversation continues, going around and around in circles, with Aita rarely getting the last word in. He's outnumbered—in fact, at this moment, he's the only one here that thinks the rebelling humans deserve a chance.

They break eventually, when they can't talk another minute without coming to physical blows. Tensions are high, and Aita feels as exhausted as if he's just run a marathon. He retreats to a corner by himself, and is surprised when Juno follows him.

"You don't really believe all this," she says. "Do you?"

Aita takes a few seconds to gather himself before turning back to look at her. "Yes," he says. "I absolutely believe it. Humans deserve every chance we can give them, and we're losing something by keeping them broken."

"Why?"

He doesn't dare tell her what he's seen in the future, about the people he cares about, but she's not stupid and she puts the first half of it together.

"You've been different since you went on that mission to investigate the future of humans," Juno says. "What did you _see_? All you would say when you came back was the same thing you're saying now—that you _believe_ in humans."

"I won't tell you," Aita says.

The sound she makes has no words in it, but it communicates her frustration clearly enough.

"Juno," Aita says. "I saw humans. I saw them living, with everything that entails, and I don't know why you need to know anything else."

"No," Juno says. "You saw more. "I _know_ you did."

He'd seen the aftermath of what happened to her. He'd seen the way she'd taken his face and plastered it across centuries of human DNA, all the way up to Elijah. He'd seen the place where she was trapped for millennia, and heard the stories of what she'd tried to do before she was finally defeated for good. "I won't tell you," he says. "There are some things we're just not supposed to know. Or _know_."

She stares at him for a long time then, gradually, softens. "Aita," she says. "I think you used to like me."

Aita knows his face must be burning bright red. He had liked her once, before seeing the kind of woman she would become, and what she would use him for. "I don't—not that you—"

"I did like you too," she says.

"I thought you must have," Aita says. His mind is just going sort of blank. He has no idea why Juno's cornered him like this, now, to talk about any of this. There are more important things. There are the humans that need them to be on _their_ side.

"Really?" Juno asks.

In the future, in _a_ future, they'd been married.

"I just…"

"And then you left," Juno says. "And you came back. Did you fall in love with a human?"

"What?" he says. " _No_."

And there's the sharpness in her eyes again as she goes back on the attack, so quickly it startles Aita. It's an act, he realizes. She's doing whatever she can think of to get him to explain what she wants to know. "Then what _changed_?" she demands.

"You!" he says, before he can stop himself. "In tens of thousands of years, you are going to change. And the person you're going to become is—"

"What?" she demands. "In the future?"

"Still fighting humans, of course," Aita says sarcastically. "Even when they rule the world and you're the only one of us left-"

And she smiles. It's calculating, almost predatory, and Aita doesn't know what mistake he's made but he knows that there must have been one. "So they did replace us," she says. "They are a danger. Thank you, Aita. That's all I wanted to hear."

She turns and leaves him then, and Aita has a sinking feeling that he's just said the worst possible thing. He dashes after her, and closes his hand around her upper arm. "Wait," he says urgently. "Just… Juno, just wait a minute."

She raises her eyebrows at him. "What."

"Let me show you," he says. He's not sure where this is going or what he could possibly do to prove her wrong, but he knows he has to try. "Not the council, just you."

"The future?" she asks.

"No," he says. He'd sent Ana there to be safe for a reason. "Here. Let me show you the humans here."

She looks at him, and Aita can see her about to say _no_. She has the upper hand. It's the only thing she reasonably could say, and yet…

"Alright," she says.

"What?"

"One way or another, we're going to resolve this," she says. "If you can show me that humans are people too—" Her voice is mocking as she says this. "Maybe you'll convert me to your side. Or, more likely, you'll realize that _even if_ you're right, _even if_ there's something more to humans, the fact that they exist is hurting _our_ people."

"No," Aita says. "Humans will only make us stronger."

That's all they've ever done for him, after all.

-/-

"So what happens now?"

Elijah looks up when Khemu corners him, and sighs. "Can we just assume for right now that I have no idea what's going on or what we're supposed to do next?" he asks. "Because I have… I'm clueless, Khemu."

On the other end of the room, the girls are having a quiet conversation of their own. Aletheia and Elina both look a little awkward, in a way that Elijah doesn't blame either of them for. This is a weird situation, after all. Not the best time ever for making new friends.

Ana, on the other hand, seems perfectly happy as she darts between the two of them. She seems less worried, now that she has more people she trusts around her.

"Okay." Khemu glances back over his shoulder at the girls, then steps closer to Elijah. "So are you… Elijah, honestly, you don't seem like you're coping okay right now."

"I feel… I just can't shake this feeling that something's going to get worse," Elijah says honestly. "Everything that's going wrong is happening thousands of years in the past, but it feels so…" He gestures vaguely at the two of them. " _Close_. But there's nothing we can do to stop it, or help, or…"

"Whatever happens," Khemu tries. "It's all over."

And then, with a perfect sense of dramatic timing, Elijah's phone starts to ring. He makes a face, but doesn't dare not answer it just in case someone's hurt or something (his dad's a Hidden One, and he knows things can get dicey sometimes).

"Hello?" he says.

"Elijah?"

He pauses for a long minute, waiting for his usual sixth sense of knowledge to tell him what's going on here. It doesn't come—maybe he's too tired, or maybe he's just unlucky, but either way what happens next is just one long, awkward pause.

"Yes?" he says at last.

"Elijah Miles," the voice continues, a little more uncertainly this time. It's a woman's voice, Elijah notes. Vaguely familiar, but that might just be a trick of the way cell phones tend to distort everyone's voices into a kind of tinny shadow. She sounds older, maybe his dad's age or even a few years past that.

"I…" Elijah is wary, he can't help himself. He doesn't like the idea of a stranger knowing his full name.

"Are you Elijah Miles?" the woman presses, and Elijah realizes he's not going to be able to get away without confirming it.

"Yes," he says.

He looks up at Khemu, who mouths, _who is it?_

Elijah shrugs.

On the other end of the phone, the woman lets out a sigh that sounds like static in Elijah's ear. "Finally," she says. "I've been… I shouldn't have let you go in the first place, I've been trying to track you down and you're just—well, you're using your dad's last name now aren't you? I didn't expect that, and I—"

Something starts to tickle at the back of Elijah's mind. It's not exactly a knowing of what's going on, but a kind of knowing that very soon, something upsetting is going to happen. Preemptively, his stomach plummets. "What's going on?" he asks. "Who are you?"

"Who is it?" Khemu asks again, out loud this time. It's loud enough, in fact, that Elina and Aletheia look up at them, both looking vaguely concerned.

"Elijah," the woman says. "This is your mother."

Oh.

The first thought to go through Elijah's mind is that at least it makes sense why her voice had sounded vaguely familiar to him. But he hasn't seen his mother since he was… well, he'd been much younger at the time, and more Sage than anything else. He'd known things then, but hadn't understood them, or why he was different, or how to even begin to relate to the people around him.

He'd _known_ that it was time to go, and so he'd left his mother and gone to his father, where things had worked out as well as they possibly could have. He'd made friends, and found a family he could understand. He'd helped save the world. Twice. He's learned so much about where he comes from and what it means to be a Sage, but he's never had the courage to look back at the mother he'd left behind.

He hasn't thought about her.

"I'm sorry," he says all in a rush. "I'm really sorry, but I think you must have the wrong number."

"Wrong number?" she repeats, crestfallen. "But how many Elijah Miles-es can there be in the world?"

"Two," Elijah says. "Definitely two, at least. There must be—"

" _Elijah_ ," she says, and he slumps. "What are you doing?"

It's not fair. There's already a crisis going on, and Elijah doesn't have any idea why his mom is calling him now (still assuming it really is her, and not part of some kind of plot). And most importantly, he doesn't know how he feels about her showing back up all of a sudden like this. He needs… time, and space, to fix what's already wrong and figure out how he feels before he lets her back into his life.

"I can't do this right now," he tells her, fighting and mostly failing to keep his voice calm. "You don't understand, there's so much going on already, and it's really important, and—"

"Do you know how long I've been trying to find you?" The woman, possibly his mother—and then, too late, the flash of _knowing_ comes to tell him that he is, actually, speaking to his mother. He's not sure whether that makes things better or worse.

"I'm—" He can't think of any good reason she'd possibly be trying to find him. He can't even remember what kind of person she'd been, really, except that she'd seemed very tired and sad all the time. Which is fair. If he'd had to deal with a son that treated him like he'd treated his mother, he probably would have been tired and sad all the time too.

In a panic, he throws the phone to Khemu, who fumbles just barely manages to catch it. "What's this for?" he asks. "Who is it?"

"My mom," Elijah says, and then—panic overwhelming him all at once—he turns and runs. There's a hand on his shoulder but Elijah twists and slips away, and there's no one close enough or fast enough after that to grab him as he stumbles, half falls into the door. He's clumsy and uncoordinated as he runs away from his past and his mistakes and the person he used to be and the consequences of what happened when he left all those years ago.

-/-

"What the fuck was that?" Elina whispers, then winces when she remembers there's a little kid in the room. Luckily, when she turns to see if she's done any damage, Aletheia has her hands over Ana's ears. She gives Elina a reproachful look, then slowly removes her hands from the now wiggling Ana.

"I… suppose he has a problem with his mother?" she says.

"Elijah doesn't have a mom," Ana says.

"Oh?" Aletheia asks, turning to her. She looks completely confused by what's going on here. Elina can't blame her. She's pretty confused herself. "How do you know?"

"I never saw him with a mom," Ana says. She looks suddenly uncertain. "Why, does he have one?"

"This is ridiculous," Khemu says. "We have more important things to worry about." He holds Elijah's phone up to his own ear. "Hello," he says. "Sorry, Mrs.—" A brief pause, then, "Ms. Simmons, sorry. I—no, my name's Khemu. I'm a friend of Elijah's. He just had to… step away for a minute."

Elina, Aletheia, and even Ana wait in curious silence as Khemu listens for almost a full minute, nodding occasionally.

"I understand," he says at last. "And I'm sure that as soon as Elijah gets back, he'll be happy to…" A wince, then, "No, Ms. Simmons, I'm sure he didn't mean to—" He sighs. "Yes ma'am. I'll pass the message along."

He's barely managed to hang up before Elina blurts out, "What the—" Ana's here, she reminds herself, Ana's not supposed to hear words like that. "What the _heck_ happened, Khemu? Was she really his mom?"

"I mean…" He's turning the phone over and over in his hand, staring at it like it has all the secrets of the universe hidden inside. "He wouldn't have gone running away if it was just some stranger, would he?"

"I guess not," Elina admits. Then she turns to Aletheia. "You're one of… I mean, you're an isu, right? You should be able to tell whether that was really his mom, right?"

"No," Aletheia says. "I would need more data, to be able to give you a definite answer. We're not psychic, like I've said. We just pick up on things that we don't ever really notice consciously—but I don't know enough about human culture to be able to _interpret_ those things."

"So… we have no idea," Elina says. "Great."

"He ran," Khemu says. "Why would he run if it was just some stranger?"

"Why would he run if it was his _mom_?" Elina asks. "I mean, you've had some problems with your mom, but you never ran away from her."

"I'm also not Elijah," Khemu says, crossing his arms and staring thoughtfully in the direction Elijah had run off toward. "And I'm sure he has his reasons."

"We don't have time for this," Aletheia says. "I'm going after him."

"No!" Elina jumps in front of her. She flushes when everyone stares, but Aletheia doesn't know Elijah like she and Khemu do. "We'll go after him. You stay here with Ana. Is that okay with you, Ana?"

"Yea?" Ana says hesitantly.

"Great," Elina says, grabbing Khemu by the apple. He's strong enough to hold her off, but he doesn't try. "Awesome. Let's go, Khemu."

 **-/-**

 **...I'm so sorry this chapter isn't good. I** **tried :(**


	5. Chapter 5

Elijah knows ( _knows_ ) where to go to be alone, but he doesn't know where he is. Somewhere just on the edge of campus, quiet and mostly bare, with only the occasional student wandering by. None of them pays him any attention, so Elijah sits down on a wooden bench and cries.

There's a hand, suddenly, on the back of his head. Familiar fingers stroke his hair once, twice, and then Elina walks around to face him. Khemu is only a step or two behind.

"Where's Ana?" Elijah asks, wiping his eyes.

"We left her with Aletheia," Khemu says.

"We don't really know if we can trust—"

"That wouldn't be a problem if you hadn't gone running off!" Elina snaps. "Come on, Elijah, what was that for?"

"You weren't supposed to follow me," Elijah says. "I just needed a minute, guys."

"You _had_ a minute," Elina says. "It took us like half an hour to find you."

Elijah blinks and then reaches for his phone. Too late, he remembers he'd thrown it at Khemu and left it in his room. "What time is it?"

"10:00," Khemu says. He pulls Elijah's phone out of his bag and starts to toss it to him, but when he sees Elijah's _please don't do that_ expression, he just hands it to him instead. "Is your mom… is she really awful?"

"No," Elijah says.

"Do you know something bad about her?" Khemu presses.

"No."

"Did she threaten you?"

Elijah grits his teeth and doesn't look at Khemu. " _No_ ," he says.

"Then—"

" _I'm_ awful," Elijah says. "Or I was, when I lived with her. Khemu, you remember what I was like when we met."

"Kind of weird," Khemu says. "But—"

"Okay," Elijah interrupts. "Except you were a kid, and weird was just weird. She was… is my mom. She was supposed to be able to do all the things moms _do_ for kids. I never let her. I knew too much from the beginning, and I never saw the… the point of her. I was a bad son. I was a horrible person. That's what I'm running from, okay?"

"Because you think she'll hate you?" Khemu asks.

"Did you just hear how I described myself?" Elijah asks.

"Sure," Khemu says. "But she's trying to find you, remember? She wouldn't be doing that if everything was as bad as you remember."

"She gave me up," Elijah mutters. "And I'm not saying it was her fault. I'm the one that left. But she let me go."

His two friends look at each other, and Elijah sighs.

"You should talk to her," Khemu says. "You can either sit around worrying about it, or you can talk to her and figure out how to react. And I mean—look, you saw how hard it was for me when we were running around in the past with my mom, and I didn't know how to talk to her. Seriously, don't do that."

Elijah looks down at his phone. "It just feels like a bad time to do it," he says, and it sounds like an excuse even to him. "There's a war—"

"And we're not part of it."

Elina's words are a slap to the face, and Elijah stares.

"Well, we're not," Elina says. "The isu are fighting humans, right? Even if we were there, all we'd be doing would be fighting isu, and I mean… Juno's gone because of us, and you managed to convince Aita we shouldn't be fighting in the first place, but what would we do with a world _full_ of them?"

"What are the humans from that time going to do with a world full of isu?" Elijah asks. "Do you think they can win a fight with them?"

"They _did_ ," Elina says. "This is history, isn't it? There's no more isu left in the world, but there's tons of humans."

"But that's not great either," Elijah says. "Not when there's good isu out there, like Aita, and probably more, and—"

"Elijah," Khemu says. "That's a _later_ problem. You know what the _now_ problem is?"

Elijah bites back a sigh. "Calling my mom?" he asks.

"Calling your mom," Khemu agrees, giving Elijah a little pat on the back. Then he and Elina back off a few steps to give him some privacy.

Elijah doesn't want to call his mom. He also doesn't want to think about the possibility that people he cares about are stuck in the past, in the middle of a war, and he can't do anything about it.

Comparatively, it makes talking to his mom seem not so bad at all. Elijah calls the number his mom had called him from, then shifts slightly so his back is to Elina and Khemu. The phone rings several times, and Elijah is just starting to hope that he's going to go to voicemail, when there's a click, and she says, "Hello?"

"It's me," Elijah says, voice a little weaker than he wants it to be. "I'm… calling you back."

A pause, and then, "Elijah."

"I wanted to find out why you were calling," Elijah says. He fidgets, but then… it's not like his mom doesn't already know what kind of person he is. She'd put up with him knowing things he shouldn't, back when he didn't know how to handle it. "I should just _know_ , but ah…" He frowns. "I don't. And I don't like not knowing, so—"

"Elijah." She sounds like she's laughing or crying or both. "Elijah, I'm _sorry_."

That throws him for a loop, more than he wants to admit. He feels like he's the one at fault here. He can still _remember_ , with the worst kind of clarity, how she'd tried to help him, to be there for him, to teach him the things kids aren't supposed to know unless somebody tells them first.

He'd just _known_ it all already. He hadn't needed her, and he'd made that abundantly clear right up until the day he left.

"Don't be sorry," he says. "It's—what _I_ did was wrong, I should have… I couldn't figure out how to…" He struggles for the right words, still not entirely sure how this is happening. She should be shouting at him. She shouldn't be trying to reach out to him at all.

"Why don't we meet?" she asks.

Tyler's train of thoughts derail immediately, and he almost drops the phone, fumbling it, suddenly wishing he could just throw it at Khemu again. His friend, who knows him _much_ too well for that, gestures violently to indicate that Elijah is _not_ allowed to do that.

"You want to see me?" he asks. " _Why_?"

But before he can answer, there's this wave of _knowing_. He understands all at once that she's been looking for him, that she blames herself for what she couldn't possibly have understood or controlled, and that she's been looking for him, all this time.

"Beca—"

"Yes," Elijah blurts out. "I'll see you. Soon. You can come here, and I'll try not to be weird."

"Sure," she says, after a brief moment of disorientation. She sounds a little more confused when she asks, "Where exactly are—"

Elijah gives her his address. Then he hesitates. "Are you sure?" he asks. "Are you _really_ —"

"Yes."

-/-

Aita isn't exactly sure what to expect when he and Juno slip away from the meeting—it's over for the day, technically, but it's obvious that they're still supposed to stay close by. Instead, they sneak out of the building, past the groups of guards, and out into the rest of the city, where they're going to find out together whether the newly awakened humans are a threat or not.

"It's quiet," Juno says, when they've walked half a dozen blocks. Aita looks over at her, surprised—he hadn't expected her to break the quiet. Especially not to say something that isn't obviously rude or challenging.

In fact, looking around, it's true. There's no sign of the humans. Aita had expected… something. After all, these are people that have never had lives or even thoughts of their own before. And they're… what, hiding?

"They're… farther down," Aita says, as the _knowing_ comes to him. Juno nods, because she must be getting the same knowledge that he is—that the humans are close, just down this street and then around the corner to that one—

And then there they are, all at once, more humans than Aita has ever seen in this place and this time. Just outside of town, they see the humans. There aren't actually that many of them, Aita notes dimly. Definitely not as many as he'd expected. There's… two, maybe three hundred. That's not all the humans in the city, but it's a good portion of them at least. Aita sees older men and women with rough hands and tired faces that look like they've been worked and used for a long time, and he sees younger men and women, even children, that look like they might have just gotten out of the warehouses for the first time.

And then a human notices them. Just one, a teenaged boy fifty feet away. And he points, and the awareness grows through the pack of humans until it reaches all the way from edge to edge, and suddenly the crowd is just staring at them.

"Are you ready to admit they're dangerous yet?" Juno asks.

"For _what_?" Aita asks, although he can admit the way they stare is a _little_ creepy.

"For… there's so _many_ of them," Juno says, and she sounds… awed. It's an expression that takes Aita several seconds to place—it's not like Juno at all. He's still staring, actually, when she turns and catches him at it.

"What?" she asks.

"I just didn't think you'd be impressed by anything about humans," Aita says.

"What," Juno says, quickly recovering her composure. "That they breed like vermin? That's not exactly a good thing."

"It's—" He shakes his head and pushes deeper into the crowd of humans. Mostly they're sitting in silence, or milling around in almost silence. They're just looking at each other, mostly. Occasionally one will speak, in hesitant and simple words that Aita very badly does not want to overhear. It had been hard enough with Ana, helping her learn all the things she should have known. But Ana had been a toddler then, and there wasn't much for her to catch up on. These people here have missed much more. They need _help_ , not war.

There's a gradual wave of realization moving through the humans as, in bits and pieces, they notice Aita and Juno standing there. The humans draw back, into a loose circle around the pair of them. They're staring, most of them, wide eyed. Aita feels very uncomfortable here, the way he had when he was in the future, before meeting Elijah. He can't imagine how Juno must be feeling (he doesn't think he'd like the answer, really), but _he's_ feeling faintly embarrassed and unhappy. This isn't right. There's no reason for humans to be afraid of them.

"Please," he says, stepping forward. The humans in front of him draw back, clearly nervous and uncertain. Aita swallows, hard, and puts out his hands in what he hopes will be interpreted as a sign of peace. "We're not going to hurt you."

"Not unless you hurt us first," Juno says darkly, and Aita shoots her a look. "It doesn't _matter_ ," she says. "It doesn't matter what you say to them. They're not really people, are they? Just humans."

The humans are drawing back, sort of murmuring. It's half words and half just sounds, but it's scared. And Aita isn't sure what to do, they're looking at him the same way they look at Juno. They don't seem to recognize or care that he's trying to help while she'd just as soon see them all dead.

How is he supposed to _help_ them if they won't let him?

"I think you've proved your point," Juno says sarcastically.

Aita frowns. Then he turns around to stand between Juno and the retreating crowd of humans. They're heading out, away from them, away from the city, and part of Aita wants to stop them from going but part of him doesn't even know what he'd want them to do instead. "The _point_ ," he says, because if he can't say anything to the humans to help, at least he can say something to Juno. "Is that there's no violence."

"The point," Juno says coolly. "Is that you have completely failed to show me anything in humanity that is worth keeping." She gives Aita a smug, pointed look, and walks away. Back to the city. Back to the rest of the isu. But Aita…

Holds his ground. He doesn't have any idea where this is going, but…

For now, at least, until he finds out what's going to happen next and whether he can help, he's staying here with the humans.

There's no possible way _this_ can go wrong, he thinks bitterly to himself as Juno walks away.

 **-/-**

 **Short chapter with not much happening, I'm sorry. :( I've just been really struggling with this fic lately. I may been to take a break to write some other stuff before I can come back to it, we'll see.**


	6. Chapter 6

It takes some time for the humans to get used to the fact that Aita is with them, but after a while they just… start to ignore him. Sure, some of them still shoot him uncomfortable looks, but for the most part… they're caught up in each other. They don't care about him.

Aita's not sure what he's going to do here, or how long he's going to stay. But he has a feeling, deep in his gut, that walking away would be the wrong thing to do. Even if he's not sure what to do, he… he has to stay.

Because no one else will.

When Ava was… woken up, or released from the apple, or whatever the right phrase would be. When she first came to live with him, she'd needed to catch up on so much, and she'd been a _child_ , with only a few years of lost socializing to make up for. Aita has no doubt that she'll be able to fend for herself when she grows up, but the people here…

It's hours before any of them come close to him. When they do, it's the children first. Creeping closer to him with wide, curious eyes, so much smaller even than isu children. Aita is starting to wonder if they're actually going to come over and… and poke him or something, when an adult walks over to join them. He sort of shuffles, bowed over by what must be years of hard labor.

"You should…" His voice is slow, and makes him sound like he's consciously thinking about every movement of his tongue. "You should go."

Aita studies him, not sure how to respond. He's ashamed to admit to himself that he's surprised to hear a human speaking to him at all. "Why?" he asks. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Haven't you people… done enough?" the man asks.

This time, Aita doesn't answer. He doesn't know how. It's hard to listen to this man struggling to speak, to string a full thought together—and know that this is probably the most complicated thought he's ever been allowed to have in his life.

"Just want to be left alone," the man mumbles. "Just leave us _alone_."

Aita stands, feeling strangely heavy. He's… he can't force himself to stay here, and intrude on these people. "I will," he promises. "And I'll do what I can to make sure nobody else bothers you either."

He's not sure the man fully grasps that, but Aita doesn't need him to understand. He just needs to know that he's fully committed to this now. So he begins his trek back to the city, back to an argument that isn't going to be any easier to face this time, back to—

"I wasn't expecting it to go quite like that."

Aita looks up—he's been so caught up in his own thoughts that he doesn't hear Juno until she's right beside him. "What do you mean?" he asks.

"I mean," she continues. " _I_ knew the humans weren't worth wasting time on," she tells him. "But I didn't expect you to walk away from them too."

Aita bristles. "I'm not giving up on them," he says. "But they don't want us there." He can't blame them. After everything Aita's people have done to him, why would he want to risk being anywhere close. "Juno, there is _space_ for them. They can fill up the places where we don't live, we'll never even have to see them. Why do you want them to suffer? What is _wrong_ inside your head that you're enjoying this so much?"

Juno gives him a look that seems honestly surprised. "Aita," she says. "You're the odd one out here. I'm not."

"I used to think the same way you do now," Aita tells her. "I'm not proud of it, but I _changed_. You can do the same."

He doesn't know why he's even trying to change her. She's… cruel. She's always been cruel, and time will only make her more so.

"Show me, then," Juno says. "Not these people here. These obviously aren't the people that made you change your mind. Show me _that_."

The future. Where Ava is. "No."

Juno sighs in obvious exasperation. "Then," she says. "I think we both know how this is going to go. We'll go back to the council, either right now or in a little while. But regardless of _when_ we go back, you'll keep arguing for human rights, and I'll argue against them, and everyone will listen to me."

"They might not," Aita says. "This is the right thing to do—all I have to do is make them _see_."

"They won't see," Juno says flatly. "They don't want to see, because humans have always been nothing to us, and it's easier to keep believing that humans are worthless, and also…" She leans closer, and whispers in his ear. "And also, Aita, I am _very_ convincing." She draws back an inch or two. "If I was on your side, you know it would be much easier to convince the council to save the humans. Your best chance at a world you can bring your so called daughter back to is one that I agree on."

She gives him a significant look, and for a long minute Aita is torn. He doesn't want to show her where his daughter is, or where the people he cares about are, or even the people he _doesn't_ care about. Nobody deserves to be exposed to Juno.

But.

"There's no other way to convince you?" he asks at last. He cannot meet her eyes.

He sees her expression change, though, a smile curling up across her face. "Then let's—"

"Wait," he says. "Promise me that you won't hurt anyone while we're there. Promise, Juno."

She looks at him, and there's a long pause before she says, "I promise."

Aita can feel that she intends to keep the promise—his sixth sense, the isu _knowing_ tells him that, as much as she may sneer, she also intends to keep from hurting anyone while they're there.

Reluctantly, knowing this is a bad idea, he reaches for the apple.

-/-

Classes start the next day, and Elijah's not sure what to do with Ava.

She's still asleep, in his bed, when he and Khemu start to very quietly get ready for class. "I have class all morning," Elijah whispers, as Khemu audibly stubs his toe on something on the other side of the room. They don't want to turn the light on and risk waking Ava.

" _Ow_ ," Khemu answers.

"Sorry," Elijah says, reflexively, in response to the ow. "But when do you have class today?"

"I have one in half an hour," Khemu says, when he's stopped cursing under his breath and hopping around on one foot. "But I'll be back by… 10:30 I guess? Then I have another class at 3:00."

"So you can watch her after you get back from class," Elijah says, nodding at Ava. "And I'll watch her in the afternoon."

"What about this morning when we both have class?"

A brief pause.

"When does Elina have class?" Khemu asks. "I'm texting her."

They wait about five minutes while they gather their textbooks and pack their bags, then Elijah says, "So I guess the good news is that she probably doesn't have class this morning, because she's not texting you back, but the bad news is that because she doesn't have class this morning, she's sleeping in."

"We really should have planned this out last night," Khemu says. "Should we go wake her up and see if she'll come here and stay with Ava?"

"I guess we'll have to," Elijah says. "I'll go." He grabs his keys and heads for the door, then stops as soon as he's opened it.

Aletheia is just on the other side, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, looking tired and a bit grubby. Elijah's not sure where she's been staying—maybe he should have offered her space with them, but the dorm room is _small_ , and with Ava staying there too, it would have been really tight to add Aletheia. Even being shorter than most other isu, she's still close to six feet.

"What are you doing here?" Elijah whispers, stepping out into the hallway and closing the door behind him.

Aletheia waits until the door's closed before answering. "You need a babysitter, don't you?"

Elijah's tired enough that he almost asks her how she knows before remembering that right, oh yea, _isu_. "Are you volunteering?" he asks.

"Sure," she says. "I'm here to find out more about humans. Ava's human."

Elijah's not _entirely_ sure if he trusts Altheia to watch Ava. Aita had trusted him with her, and he takes that seriously. But… he has to go to class, and so does Khemu, and Elina's asleep, so what choice does he have? Solemnly, he pulls the key to the dorm room of his keyring and hands it to her. "Khemu will be back before lunch," he tells her. "And I'll be here all afternoon. I don't think you should take her down to the cafeteria, people will start to wonder what she's doing here, but Khemu's hoarding instant macaroni and I have granola bars and—"

"I'll figure it out," Aletheia says with a tiny smile.

Elijah doesn't smile back, but he lets Aletheia in and barely lingers a weirdly long time at all before Khemu forces him out.

"Is she going to be okay?" Khemu asks, when they've gone down three flights of stairs and made it to the street outside.

"I don't know," Elijah says. "Too many variables. Hopefully she'll be okay."

They look at each other, then Khemu nods, and Elijah sighs, and they go their separate ways to make it to their classes.

Elijah can't think about anything his professors are lecturing about all morning. Mostly it seems to be syllabus after syllabus, which is good because at least he doesn't feel like he's missing anything academic, but bad because he _does_ feel like he's missing vital information about when his homework and essays are due, so… that's going to be fun to figure out later.

He keeps wanting to text Aletheia to make sure Ava's okay, but she's from _tens of thousands of years in the past and doesn't have a phone_. So instead he just sits through three straight classes (learning nothing in the process except that it wasn't a good idea to schedule three classes right after each other) before he's finally free to run back to the dorms and make sure everyone's still in one piece.

They are, thankfully. All four of them are crowded into the tiny dorm room, Khemu working on homework and Elina cramming things into her backpack getting ready to go, while Ava mopes about being stuck inside and Aletheia watches it all.

Elijah breathes again.

"Oh good," Elina says, looking up at him when he's shuffled sideways into the room, and brought the number of people up from four to five in the process. "You're back."

"Did something happen?" Elijah asks.

"No," Elina says. "I just have to go to class, and then my roommate's insisting we need to hang out again," She looks disgruntled. "And Khemu just found out he's supposed to go to some orientation thing for his major?" She shrugs and zips up her backpack.

"And they've decided not to trust me alone with her," Aletheia adds, pointing at Ava.

All three teenagers freeze as they try to figure out how to answer this without either lying, or giving Aletheia the false impression that they're totally fine with her being alone with Ava.

"It's not that we don't—"

"It's really just that everything's so _weird_ …"

Elijah doesn't say anything, because he's pretty sure that Aletheia already _knows_ that they don't trust her. She hasn't earned it yet. "I'll be here for the rest of the day," he says instead. "You guys can go."

"Can I go too?" Ava asks. She's looking decidedly cranky by this point. "I'm _bored_ , 'lijah! Can't we go outside?"

And she looks so sad and restless that Elijah caves immediately. "Yea," he says. "Come on, I'll take you out."

She runs, cheering ("Shh!" Elijah hisses—the walls are thin), toward him. Elijah considers her slightly grubby face and clothes, and then decides it can't be helped. Sneaking her into the bathroom would be too much of a risk, and he doesn't exactly have anything more normal she can wear.

"Elijah…" She drags his name out, giving him an _oh pity me_ look that Elijah gives in to immediately.

"Alright then," he says. "We can't have you stuck in here until your dad gets back." He looks over at Aletheia and adds, reluctantly, "You should come too."

"You're sure?" she asks. "You don't sound too excited about it."

"I guess I want to know more about you if you're going to be helping out with her," Elijah says. "And I guess you're trying to find out about us anyway, right? Win-win."

She looks surprised and gratified as the three of them head outside. There's not much space for Ava to run around in by the dorm building, but a few blocks away the college's quad has more than enough space. She's delighted by having the space to run around, and is having fun going back and forth between a pair of trees when suddenly the hairs on the back of Elijah's neck stand on end.

"You feel it too," Aletheia says, voice quiet. It's not a question.

"Someone's coming," Elijah says, and they both turn to face the empty space that resolves a moment later into Aita and Juno.

"Oo- _oh_ ," Aletheia says, and that just about seems to sum it up.

Then, from behind him, Elijah hears _"Daddy!"_ as Ava comes running back toward them, arms and legs pumping, to throw herself into Aita's arms. So at least _something's_ going right.

 **-/-**

 **Hey guys, so... *deep breath* I really hate to do this, but I need to take a step back from this story right now. There are a lot of things I really want to write right now, and this fic just... isn't one of them. I really gave it a shot, I tried to power through and get to the end because I _hate_ putting things on indefinite hiatus, I know it's inconsiderate and unsatisfying, but I just... I really can't right now.**

 **I'll keep this on hiatus, and maybe in a few weeks or months I'll be able to come back with a real ending (or at least something to wrap this up). I do care about these characters, and I want them to have the ending they deserve. Again, I'm really sorry about this. I generally try to be better than this, but I'm getting burnt out and I have to do something else. Hopefully just for a while, but I don't want to make any promises until I'm in a better headspace.**


End file.
